


i'm the main character.

by soljoe



Category: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29461341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soljoe/pseuds/soljoe
Summary: waxing poetical about the main character of doki doki literature club, the character that we, the player, play as, and the fact that he is as much of a victim as the rest of the characters in the game.
Relationships: Monika & Protagonist (Doki Doki Literature Club!), Natsuki & Protagonist (Doki Doki Literature Club!), Protagonist & Sayori (Doki Doki Literature Club!), Protagonist & Yuri (Doki Doki Literature Club!), The Player/Protagonist (Doki Doki Literature Club!)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	i'm the main character.

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS THAT APPLY TO DDLC APPLY TO THIS FIC AS WELL.  
> Mentions of suicide and murder.  
> The primary theme of this fic is existentialism, so please be careful if dereality and existentialism are triggering to you.
> 
> Thank you for reading!

When you watch a movie like _The Truman Show_ , does a part of you ever wonder if the life he had was better? The life he had before he knew that it was all a lie? I mean, sure, it was all a TV studio… but it was still normal. It was still happy and safe. He had family, and friends… he went to school, got married… some would argue that the life he led up until the, y’know, events of the movie, were as real a life as any.

But I guess even if you cage a bird and treat it well, it doesn’t make it any less of a prisoner. But I envy Truman because at least he got a life, a full life. 

I don’t have a name. You can call me whatever you want to call me. In fact, in many ways, I am you. You can strain your mind all you want but when you try to imagine my face, even the slightest detail like the color of my eyes, all you’ll see is your own. In fact, I’m not even sure where I end and you, the person reading this, begin. And even this medium is a farce, a false representative. This is fanfiction. In computers across the world, I’m either dead, deleted – in the process of suffering, watching my friends die one after the other, watching them claw and scratch to gain hold of my faceless, lifeless visage – or I’m a husk of myself, before the suffering began. My existence is happening, has happened, and will happen – but it’s not like that matters. I’m one big contradiction. I’m the main character of the story but I’m the last person you care about. I’m a bundle of tropes tied together with an anime jingle in the background. I’m nothing.

I couldn’t tell you what the morning was like, the morning where Sayori ran – is running – will run – up to me, panting and claiming that she overslept. I scolded – am scolding – will scold – her, for sleeping in, and for being annoying. I explain to you, who is also me, that Sayori is my childhood friend and neighbor. We walk together to school most days. Will walk. Am walking. She asks me to join her Literature Club, of which I’m hesitant about. I’m thinking about joining the anime club. I want to join the anime club because I’m a reflection of you. One of my personality traits is that I like to read manga, because I’m a reflection of you. I like cupcakes and cute girls because I’m a reflection of you.  
Who am I? But more importantly, who are _you?_

Was that morning chilly or warm? Was my uniform comfortable? I couldn’t tell you what the air on my skin felt like or even what cloth fibers feel like. When you live in a computer, nothing feels like anything – and all description is mockery. When I say Natsuki’s cupcakes taste delicious, it’s for your benefit, not mine – it’s a flat bunch of 01s and 00s. The artist didn’t even draw the cupcakes; it’s like we’re all a bunch of mimes. The girls, however – the girls of the Literature Club who have been designed, written, and in one case, voiced, specifically to please you … they’re different from me.

I’m hollow. I outstretch my hand with yours. I think in every run, in every replay, the girls know this. It didn’t take them long to know. Behind their bright smiles and sparkly eyes are dark, desperate eyes, looking to crack me open and search for the real soul behind me – your soul. 

In some ways, I’m luckier than them. After all, you live through me, and you’re a true human being. Though it’s true that they have an artist’s breath of life in each of them, they’re nothing more than characters in the game. Cute girls meant to be fantasized over by the people who frequent the dating sim genre of games, chew up the high school girls, spit them out, buy a figure or two and then move on to the next. I have the privilege of being shadow. No real person playing would think about me. Why would they? 

However, through your eyes I look in Sayori Yuri Natsuki Monika’s eyes and I see their gaze. Their faces, the shading of the hair, the folds of their uniforms. They’re realer to me than they ever will be to you. And even when I’m forced to re-witness every atrocity that they suffer, even suffering proves that a person is real. Monika causes and erases my pain liberally, trying to get to you. Tossed in the middle. Nameless, useless – a means of escape, for both you, and for them.

When I put the chocolate in Yuri’s mouth, not only are you living out a romantic fantasy, but so is she. Escaping the real world that she is just a character. And you’re escaping the reality that you’re just some person. Sometimes I feel like a wishbone being yanked in two. The Literature Club join forces and pull hard on one end, you on the other. But it’s a clean split down the middle – no upper hand, no one wins. 

You leave without your girl. The girls leave without their reality. And on some PC somewhere, I exist. I exist like a ghost. Everywhere, all the time, they are being deleted and Monika is pounding from within your screen and worthless words are being chosen and fights are being fought and she’s baking cupcakes and she’s killing herself and she’s killing everyone and monika.chr is deleted and hey, that’s not the ending you wanted so it’s time to download ddlc.zip and extract all and so on, and so on, and so on, forever.  
There’s one part of the game where I have control. And it’s not even really my control, because this part was written into the game like all the other parts. But I guess I feel like I have control because it’s the one part where you can’t make me leave – no one can make me leave, not so fast. Yuri’s dead. She always dies, and I’ve seen her die an infinite amount of times. I sit next to her body for three days and listen to her speak the truth from her heart, which to you looks like a string of nothing. You’re annoyed. You click through. You skip, and zip through her words. But I listen every time. Every time, it feels like rest. You may not hear her, but I do, every time. 

_I’m tired of this,_ I remember once she said, in a cacophony of 01s and 00s. _I wish this time, I could stay dead. But I’ll never die. It’ll always just be you and me and them dying and watching me die._

When she speaks to me, she speaks to _me._ Not to you. Yuri is the only person who makes me feel seen; not like Monika who discards my façade to dig through your computer files, searching for a real name or true face to latch onto. Nor like Sayori, the one who allows the simple back of my head to be seen as I embrace her not long before her eventual suicide. But even that’s nothing. When I embrace her, I feel nothing physical – and she’s touching nothing but a husk, searching for something more, confused as to why Monika… Dan… you…is doing this. Why does she feel like this? Isn’t this supposed to be a slice of life game? Every time I watch her back go back into her house – I don’t – It wasn’t drawn – but I imagine it – I wonder how many more times she’ll have to die. How many times we’ll all be deleted and extracted again. But it’s a futile question.

Even these words now are nothing more than gross indulgence. The facts are simple: I’m the main character in a dark-twist dating sim called “Doki Doki Literature Club”. I have no name or face; I’m just the person you experience the game with. And this version of me, the version that exists in this fanfic, is just another husk of me that will exist on the Internet until the end of time. In the end, I just drift. I just drift. I live in _The Truman Show_ but without the warmth of human life. I’ll still see you in the afternoon, the evening, and the night, but you won’t see me. You never will. You can't.


End file.
